authority (if indeed better can be required) may be added that also of the elder Stoics." The latter Stoics, instead of four parts made five, by dividing the noun into the appellative and proper. Others increased the number, by detaching the pronoun from the noun; the participle and adverb from the verb; and the preposition from the conjunction. The Latin grammarians went further, and detached the interjection from the adverb, within which by the Greeks it was always included, as a species. We are told indeed by Dionysius of Halicarnassus * and Quintilian, that Aristotle, with Theodectes, and the more early writers, held but three parts of speech, the noun, the verb, and the conjunction. This, it must be owned, accords with the Oriental tongues, whose grammars (we are told) admit no other. But as to Aristotle, we have his own authority to assert the contrary, who not only enumerates the four species which we have adopted, but ascertains them each by a proper definition." To conclude: the subject of the following chapters will be a distinct and separate consideration of the noun, the verb, the article, and the conjunction; which four, the better (as we apprehend) to express their respective natures, we choose to call substantives, attributives, definitives, and connectives. CHAPTER IV. CONCERNING SUBSTANTIVES, PROPERLY SO CALLED. SUBSTANTIVES are all those principal words which are significant of substances, considered as substances. The first sort of substances are the natural, such as animal, vegetable, man, oak. There are other substances of our own making. Thus, by giving a figure not natural to natural materials, we create such substances, as house, ship, watch, telescope, &c. For this we have the authority of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, De Struct. Orat. sect. 2. whom Quintilian follows, Inst. 1. i. c. 4. Diogenes Laertius and Priscian make them always to have admitted five parts. See Priscian, as before, and Laertius, 1. vii. segm. 57. * See the places quoted in the note immediately preceding. Antiquissima eorum est opinio, qui tres classes faciunt. Estque hæc Arabum quoque sententia-Hebræi quoque (qui, cum Arabes grammaticam scribere desinerent, artem eam demum scribere cœperunt, quod ante annos contigit circiter quadringentos) Hebræi, inquam, hac in re secuti sunt magistros suos Arabes.-Immo vero trium classium numerum aliæ etiam Orientis linguæ retinent. Dubium, utrum ea in re Orientales imitati sunt antiquos Græcorum, an hi potius secuti sunt Orientalium exemplum. Utut est, etiam veteres Græcos tres tantum partes agnovisse, non solum autor est Dionysius, &c. Voss. de Analog. 1. i. c. 1. See also Sanctii Minerv. l. i. c. 2. Sup. p. 126, note s. Again, by a more refined operation of our mind alone, we abstract any attribute from its necessary subject, and consider it apart, devoid of its dependence. For example, from body we abstract to fly; from surface, the being white; from soul, the being temperate. And thus it is we convert even attributes into substances, denoting them on this occasion by proper substantives, such as flight, whiteness, temperance; or else by others more general, such as motion, colour, virtue. These we call abstract substances; the second sort we call artificial. Now all those several substances have their genus, their species, and their individuals. For example, in natural substances, animal is a genus; man, a species; Alexander, an individual. In artificial substances, edifice is a genus; palace, a species; the Vatican, an individual. In abstract substances, motion is a genus; flight, a species; this flight or that flight are individuals. As therefore, every genus may be found whole and entire in each one of its species," (for thus man, horse, and dog, are each of them distinctly a complete and entire animal;) and as every species may be found whole and entire in each one of its individuals, (for thus Socrates, Plato, and Xenophon, are each of them completely and distinctly a man;) hence it is that every genus, though one, is multiplied into many; and every species, though one, is also multiplied into many, by reference to those beings which are their proper subordinates. Since then no individual has any such subordinates, it can never in strictness be considered as many, and so is truly an individual as well in nature as in name. From these principles it is, that words following the nature and genius of things, such substantives admit of number as denote genera or species; while those which denote individuals," in strictness admit it not. This is what Plato seems to have expressed in a manner somewhat mysterious, when he talks of μlav idéav did woλλv, ἑνὸς ἑκάστου κειμένου χωρὶς, πάντη διατεταμένην, καὶ πολλὰς, ἑτέρας ἀλλήλων, vnd μiâs tweeV TEρLexoμévas. Sophist. p. 253. edit. Serrani. For the common definition of genus and species, see the Isagoge, or Introduction of Porphyry to Aristotle's Logic. b Yet sometimes individuals have plurality or number, from the causes following. In the first place, the individuals of the human race are so large a multitude, even in the smallest nation, that it would be difficult to invent a new name for every new-born individual. Hence then instead of one only being called Marcus, and one only Antonius, it happens that many are called Marcus and many called Antonius; and thus it is the Romans had their plurals, Marci and Antonii, as we in later days have our Marks and our Anthonies. Now the plurals of this sort may be well called accidental, because it is merely by chance that the names coincide. There seems more reason for such plurals, as the Ptolemies, Scipios, Catos, or (to instance in modern names) the Howards, Pelhams, and Montagues; because a race or family is like a smaller sort of species; so that the family name extends to the kindred, as the specific name extends to the individuals. A third cause which contributed to make proper names become plural, was the high character or eminence of some one individual, whose name became afterwards a Besides number, another characteristic, visible in substances, is that of sex. Every substance is either male or female; or both male and female; or neither one nor the other. So that with respect to sexes and their negation, all substances conceivable are comprehended under this fourfold consideration. Now the existence of Hermaphrodites being rare, if not doubtful; hence language, only regarding those distinctions which are more obvious, considers words denoting substances to be either masculine, feminine, or neuter." As to our own species, and all those animal species which have reference to common life, or of which the male and the female, by their size, form, colour, &c. are eminently distinguished, most languages have different substantives to denote the male and the female. But as to those animal species which either less frequently occur, or of which one sex is less apparently distinguished from the other, in these a single substantive commonly serves for both sexes. In the English tongue it seems a general rule," (except only when infringed by a figure of speech,) that no substantive is masculine, but what denotes a male animal substance; none feminine, but what denotes a female animal substance; and that where the substance has no sex, the substantive is always neuter. But it is not so in Greek, Latin, and many of the modern tongues. These all of them have words, some masculine, some feminine, (and those, too, in great multitudes,) which have reference to substances where sex never had existence. To give one instance for many. Mind is surely neither male nor female, yet is vous, in Greek, masculine, and mens, in Latin, feminine. In some words, these distinctions seem owing to nothing else than to the mere casual structure of the word itself: it is of such a gender, from having such a termination, or from belonging perhaps to such a declension. In others we may imagine a a more subtle kind of reasoning, a reasoning which discerns, even in things without sex, a distant analogy to that great natural distinction, which (according to Milton) animates the world. In this view, we may conceive such substantives to have been considered as masculine, which were "conspicuous for the attributes of imparting or communicating; or which were by nature active, strong, and efficacious, and that indiscriminately, whether to good or to ill; or which had claim to eminence, either laudable or otherwise." The feminine, on the contrary, were "such as were conspicuous for the attributes either of receiving, of containing, or of producing and bringing forth; or which had more of the passive in their nature than of the active; or which were peculiarly beautiful and amiable; or which had respect to such excesses as were rather feminine than masculine." Upon these principles the two greater luminaries were considered, one as masculine, the other as feminine; the sun ("Hλos, "Sol") as masculine, from communicating light, which was native and original, as well as from the vigorous warmth and efficacy of his rays; the moon (Zeλývn, "Luna") as feminine, from being the receptacle only of another's light, and from shining with rays more delicate and soft. Thus Milton: First in his east the glorious lamp was seen, His mirror, with full face borrowing her light Par. Lost, vii. 370. By Virgil they were considered as brother and sister, which still preserves the same distinction: Nec fratris radiis obnoxia surgere luna. Georg. i. 396. The sky or ether is in Greek and Latin masculine, as being the source of those showers which impregnate the earth. The earth, on the contrary, is universally feminine, from being the grand receiver, the grand container, but above all from being the mother (either mediately or immediately) of every sublunary substance, whether animal or vegetable." Thus Virgil: Tum Pater omnipotens fæcundis imbribus æther e Mr. Linnæus, the celebrated botanist, has traced the distinction of sexes throughout the whole vegetable world, and made Georg. ii. 325. it the basis of his botanic method. Among artificial substances, the ship (vaûs, "navis") is feminine, as being so eminently a receiver and container of various things, of men, arms, provisions, goods, &c. Hence sailors, speaking of their vessel, say always, "she rides at anchor," "she is under sail." A city (mós, "civitas") and a country (Tarpis, "patria ") are feminine also, by being (like the ship) containers and receivers; and further by being, as it were, the mothers and nurses of their respective inhabitants. Thus Virgil: Salve, magna parens frugum, Saturnia Tellus, Georg. ii. 173. So, in that heroic epigram on those brave Greeks who fell at Chæronea: Γαῖα δὲ πάτρις ἔχει κόλποις τῶν πλεῖστα καμόντων Σώματα. "Their parent country in her bosom holds So Milton: The city, which thou seest, no other deem Than great and glorious Rome, queen of the earth. Par. Reg. b. iv. As to the ocean, though from its being the receiver of all rivers, as well as the container and productress of so many vegetables and animals, it might justly have been made (like the earth) feminine; yet its deep voice and boisterous nature have, in spite of these reasons, prevailed to make it male. Indeed, the very sound of Homer's Μέγα σθένος Ωκεανοῖο, would suggest to a hearer, even ignorant of its meaning, that the subject was incompatible with female delicacy and softness. Time, (xpóvos,) from his mighty efficacy upon every thing around us, is by the Greeks and English justly considered as masculine. Thus in that elegant distich, spoken by a decrepit old man : * Ὁ γὰρ χρόνος μ' ἔκαμψε, τέκτων οὐ σοφὸς, 8 Паμμnтop n xаîpe. Græc. Anth. p. 281. · Διὸ καὶ ἐν τῷ ὅλῳ τὴν γῆς φύσιν, ὡς θηλὺ καὶ μητέρα νομίζουσιν· οὐρανὸν δὲ καὶ ἡλίον, καὶ εἴ τι τῶν ἄλλων τῶν τοιού των, ὡς γενώντας καὶ πατέρας προσαγο pevovot. Arist. de Gener. Anim. i. c. 2. i Demost. in Orat. de Corona. Κ Ω Χρόνε, παντοίων θνητῶν πανεπίσкоTE Aаîμоv. Græc. Anth. p. 290. 1 Stob. Ecl. p. 591. |